 So, get up early to pray, and I got saved when I was 15 years of age. I got married when I was 16, and I had three kids by 20. I know. So telling me to get up early, who hasn't slept for three years, because we are twins when I was 19, my wife was 20, I didn't sleep for three years. And in this season of my life, they're telling me, they're telling me, not God, they're telling me, you've got to do this, this, this and this. And I think they meant well, but I think no one ever said to them, who said that that is what Christianity looks like. And they had this set of correct thinking that every new person was bombarded with from the beginning, and I'm all for letting people know, you know, we have a small group or we have a connect opportunity. All of that is courteous, and any organization that wants to thrive needs to have good customer service, good customer relations, I get that. But this was more than that. This wasn't just courtesy and hospitality and connect opportunities. This was prescribing to me if you don't do this. And so I did get up in the morning to pray. I fell asleep every morning. My wife would wake me up every morning and say, you're going to be late for work. You fell asleep again. I said, I know. And then I had a problem no one warned me about called guilt. And so from my early Christianity, I am battling guilt because what others seem to find so easy to do, I was finding so difficult to do. So now I kind of feel I'm not the real deal. I need to be properly saved like those people. That's what that's what happens. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? That's what happens. So we get. So now we're battling shame and guilt and it's not from God. None of it's from God. It's from people who have taken a tool of their mentality and how we think about God and said to other people, you know, if you want to please God, if you want to walk with God, then it looks like this. And I changed my communication style 20 years ago from being over prescribing. And I moved away from saying to people, you know, I'll fill in all the blanks for you between the idea and your behavior. I'll fill the blanks in for you. That's not your job. That's not our job. Our job like Jesus's job is to teach people more, I would say, with an agricultural approach to humans rather than an industrial approach to humans. An industrial approach to humans is a manufacturing batch mentality. We want a hundred of you. And if I want a hundred of you or a hundred of me or a hundred of what I think a Christian should look like, then I'm going to have to tell you everything you need to do. Because otherwise we're going to get a rogue person on the production line. And you're not praying like I told you to. And you're not giving like I told you to. And you're not reading a Bible like I told you to. And you're not in a small group. And you're not complying to what we tell you God wants from you. And so now what do we do with you? Now we're concerned. Now we start to get even busier with our tools on you because clearly you need more help than the rest. Now we interpret your individuality, your creativity, which I spoke to with the chapel service about, your personality, your flair, your uniqueness, your weirdness, your crazy, your quirky. Now we're trying to fix all that. And now we view it as a threat or it is maybe rebellion or maybe it's that. And once that gets into the mix, we are all doing this to each other. And it is the sin of certainty. Because if I can't be certain that you are behaving in a certain way to fit in round here, I am going to be threatened by your randomness. That I feel I have to and believe me, many, many churches in the world, I travel more than ever. Many churches in the world, their leadership, the pastors, it's a blind spot I think for us are doing versions of what I'm telling you. And I hear and I think, hmm, I think I would have said that a bit different because that sounds like this is the one size fits all God and he is not. So if we teach people a God that says, listen, come as you are and we mean that and that's our culture because that was Jesus' life. They came as they were to him. He didn't try and fix people or take a tour to them straight away. He's like, cool. Great. And when people violated, when the violated convention and they broke tradition and they just did their own thing. You know, when the guy's late to the miracle meeting because he's on a stretcher and he's paralyzed and they move slow, being carried by people. It's a slow walk. People got there earlier. So this guy gets there and he's late and his friend said to him, I'm sorry, we're late, we can't get in. The queue's outside the door. We can't get you in front of Jesus. Someone, someone, we don't know who, someone in that five people there had an idea that was beyond the permissions of conventional queuing. Someone said, I have an idea. What's that? Because if it had said, hey, it's hot, you dehydrated. When you get you out the sun, let's get you home. We give it our best shot. That would have not been a bad ending in that story. They tried and would have taught that from the story. That's good. But he said it didn't end there. Could have ended there. But somewhere on that day, one of those five people was crazy. Don't estimate crazy. Everyone of you should have at least one crazy friend, by the way. No, you should. You should text them today and say whatever they are in the world. I want to thank you because you bring crazy to my life. Because crazy is a gift you should tell somebody. Listen, don't be talking. Don't be listening to sane people when you need a breakthrough. I'm telling you, sane, sane is overrated when you're in that situation. So someone said, I have an idea. What's the idea? The idea is, let's vandalize the property. What else would you call it? What if it was your house? You'd see it as vandalism. You'd be calling the cops. And when this guy gets down in front of Jesus, here's what Jesus didn't do. Because he doesn't care. We care. People stood in line, care, waiting their turn. This guy jumped the queue. That's how I know it wasn't English. Because we invented queuing. Jesus didn't say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can't lay a hand on you because you're a criminal. You vandalized this lovely family's home. They lent me their home. And as a consequence of me being here, their home has been vandalized. And I feel bad about that. So I'm sorry, but didn't do that. It just went high five. Boom. I appreciate your initiative. But you did something outside the box. But religious people stood in the room. Got busy doing this. Trying to shape this behavior. Trying to make people fit in. You know, humans are not built to fit in. And I don't mean that we're built to be awkward or rude. Or, you know, or contrary or confrontational. But one of the things the emerging generation are going to tell you all. And we've got to get this memo because they're the future. My generation were wired for conformity. We baby boomers. We were wired to fit in, you know, behave, you know, marry for life. That's an unusual idea, isn't it? You know, marry for life, have kids settle down, get a house, get a job, get a job for life, even though you hated it. That was my generation. These emerging generation are more wild and free than we were. And what we shouldn't do, we that are my generation in charge, what we shouldn't do is do this on the kids. And try and recreate another version of our certainty. We want to be certain that they are thinking right about God. Listen, faith in God is not about correct thinking at all. It's never been about correct thinking. What is correct thinking about God? What is correct thinking about God? I'll be interested in a question to ask people that think they've got it all down. I've been doing this for a long time as many of you have. I've been walking with God for a long time, and I feel I am more uncertain now than ever about what the hell God's up to. Seriously, God constantly finds joy, I think, in proving me, I don't care what you think, I'm going to do what I want to do. I've come to awareness that God, it's a shock to me and maybe to you doesn't need my permission to use anybody or to do something different or to be random or to be crazy or to behave weird. You know, there's weird in God, don't you? If there's weird in you, where did he come from? He came from his God's DNA, what we call weird and by the way, weird is taken over the world because organizations are realizing that to continue to flourish and thrive we don't want people that are married to blockbuster mentalities. What happened to that crowd? We want to look for Netflix-oriented people and Netflix may be in for a rough time if Disney do what they're doing next. So all the world understands we don't want people in charge who are addicted to certainty but people that will take a risk, be outside the box, create new collaborations, don't clap at any good time. A lot of big finish. I think it's that and so I want you to understand that that faith is about trust, it's not about right thinking and if you believe faith is about correct thinking and God does something outside of your correct thinking you'll have a crisis in your faith that was unnecessary because you say that's not right and people leave churches all the time because someone said something that doesn't line up with their thinking and so they go to the next church until someone says something there then the next church until someone announces something there or until something does something and then they move on because they're convinced that this is the God I'm looking for and that God they're looking for doesn't exist for long and they'll find a new church and settle there because this church ticks more boxes than the last three and then eventually something happens in that church and it could be a guest speaker that comes and is naughty and you think well you invited them so you must be like that too and then I've passed it for 32 years you know how I know these things it's that and I realize that for me in my life I have done this I thought that the way I thought about God was right and that the other way people thought about God was just needing help and we exist to help you figure this out because we've figured this out we understand this because we've got lots of symposiums and prayers and fasting and debates and study so we got this thing down is I think what we slipped into this it's ego it's religious ego just been a Christian doesn't emanage you from ego been a Christian gives you another layer of ego called Christianity or religions ego that majors on systems and policies and we expect people to have a relationship with God by having a relationship with systems and policies and conformity religion is obsessed with conformity because conformity gives certainty but when people start behaving outside the box like Jesus did all hell broke loose and I think I got stuck in seasons of my life on thinking this is the right way to relate to God and my faith was rooted in the way I thought about God listen you're thinking about God is not God so your faith can't be in right thinking there is no such thing as right thinking we want healthy thinking we want informed thinking we want to share with people all that we can we want to encourage people to learn and grow but you can't say to someone I don't think that's God unless it's clearly weird and out there but you know I'm not talking about that that's too low hanging fruit for me to explain that to you and I think this is widespread in us in our humanity not in just our Christianity but only humanity and I'm appealing to as all I think and starting with me I'm on this journey of what are my golden calves what am I parking up in this thinking is right I thought this way for 20 years and when I hear thinking different to that somehow I feel threatened or I separate myself or I'm judgmental or I'm cynical or I'm sarcastic about that crowd because that's not my thinking and so I realize my relationship with God is a relationship with my thinking about God and God is bigger than your thinking way bigger Isaiah told us didn't he his ways are not your ways his thoughts are not your thoughts that's an understatement remember how sure they all were how certain they all were that Job had sinned and they took days to help him figure out look Job this stuff doesn't happen to good people because the theology said bad things happen to bad people which is an Old Testament theology by the way and good things happen to good people so if bad things are happening to Job there must be something bad in your life will help you find it they're called friends and they took days and days and days going through every part of his life trying to find a reason to explain what was wrong and why he was suffering because they have this craving and the sin of certainty if we can figure it out name it, explain it then you can go fix it policy, religion, structure, system go and fix it, put it right and all this curse will lift was their behavior them not knowing nothing was wrong the Job hadn't sinned but they were convinced he had because we're obsessed and I'm going to speak about this a little bit tonight and another idea I want to share with you guys before I leave town and you'll be glad I'm leaving town tomorrow if this is unpleasant it'll be over soon so you're okay, I'm gone is that I think this obsession we're trying to fix Job, how painful for Job to be going through his life like we all do looking for where's the secret sin, where's the thing I did wrong where's my blind spot because if I can figure that out then I'll be okay with God again this is an obsession with the way we think God relates to humans if it's not right you're going to suffer if your thinking is right and you're right with God, whatever that means then you won't suffer we still have versions of that most Christians around the world in my opinion millions of us live an Old Testament relationship with God in a New Testament era we still think God is out there somewhere, we still need to think convince him to love us, reach to us come visit us like he's out there somewhere and he's in here he's never leaving, he's internal and we kind of amen that but don't understand the implications of that is that God is not a visitor to your life you are not God's timeshare you're his home forever alright, I gotta stop, you all okay?